


monsters in the dark

by nonbinaryezrabridger



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: F/M, and about not needing someone to complete you, and how amazing that feels, but finding someone who loves all of you, don’t copy to other sites, i have a lot of emotions about them okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25256941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinaryezrabridger/pseuds/nonbinaryezrabridger
Summary: Mako wakes from a nightmare. Raleigh is there to comfort her.
Relationships: Raleigh Becket/Mako Mori
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	monsters in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> i love these two dude i should write them more often

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Mako jerks awake, sweat clinging to her like a second skin. She feels like a creature torn from its chrysalis, abruptly stopped in the middle of becoming something. For a moment she flounders, unable to separate the drift-memories from reality. 

Raleigh, bless him, watches with blue eyes gleaming pale in the moonlight coming through the window. They keep the drapes cracked just for this reason; they can’t stand to wake to pitch blackness, filled with possibilities more often than not shaped like kaiju. Raleigh doesn’t reach out to touch her; he knows her well enough by now to know that when she gets afraid the last thing she wants is to be touched. Physical contact grates on her when she’s like this, spooked and jittery.

He knows her so well; how could he not, science had picked her mind up and dropped it into his skull plenty of times. But more than that he knows her with a surety that comes from months spent together, spilling into years. He knows her with a truth that comes from loving her, the way he should. In an understanding way, that doesn’t smooth over her issues but rather watches them gently, willing to reach out a helping hand if she asks for it. There is no worship in their love, no godly heights to look down from, only a meeting of equals. That is what she had first loved about them and she still loves it today. 

Her breathing is beginning to slow as she focuses on the good thoughts, not the bad. She lets herself fall into the memories of Raleigh. Their first kiss, on that raft with the roar of planes overhead and ink swirling in the water below. Their first date, to a replay of an old, terrible godzilla movie in a local theatre. Him asking her to move into his shitty apartment at the time, and offering to paint the walls blue for her. Buying their house together, having saved up their heroes’ pay. The little spindly shrubs outside the front door that he had nursed back to health. The time they went to look at cats and came home with two that were bonded inseparably.  _ Just like us _ he had said. 

She sighs, opens her eyes without realizing she had closed them, and looks at him. He smiles gently, a quirk of his lips that she’s seen more than anyone else in his life. What a privilege, she thinks. 

With her attention on him, and with her clearer head evident, he feels it’s safe to speak and says:

“Nightmares again?”

She nods, a tight, controlled motion. Tight, controlled, impenetrable, all the things she had focused on being when she had met him. He was not solely responsible for her coming out of her shell, but he had helped. She focuses back on what he had said and replies:

“I dreamed of the drift. I was chasing the rabbit, falling, down to my worst memories and fears.”

She smiles, a symmetrical, simple curve of her lips, and says:

“Well, you know. You have them too.”

He nods expansively and says loudly:

“Boy, do I!”

She laughs at him and leans in, pressing their sides together. She’s calm enough now that the touch doesn’t feel like a brand. He notices her willingness to be touched and curls a hand around the top of her thigh, the touch sunlight warm against the nighttime coolness of the bedroom. She sighs with pleasure and lets her head fall onto his shoulder, pressing a kiss to the joint when his neck meets his chest. She lets her lips wander up his neck and to his jaw, the kisses soft and brief, just barely touching. He sighs too, melting into her and whispering:

“The dreams of the drift, they aren’t all bad, though. I’m almost envious of the time when I was so deep in you I was no longer me.”

She reaches his lips and he turns his head to kiss her fully, gentle and easy. She pulls away to say:

“I like you better this way. Solid, whole, grounded. Not the swirling confused thing the drift makes us, two parts of one whole. We are more than that. We are each whole on our own.”

He smiles, a hand coming up to run through her short hair, making the strands tickle against her cheek. He whispers:

“Yeah.” 

And goes back to kissing her. Her nightmares are quickly forgotten as she cuddles into him, drifting back into a peaceful sleep with their legs tangled and their arms around each other. There are no more monsters in the dark.

\--------


End file.
